Generally, pressure vessels (ex: bottles, tanks, containers, cylinders) are manufactured to regulatory standards which require certain design criteria and qualification approvals, as well as on-going production inspection by independent inspection agencies. For this application, “pressure bottle” and “pressure vessel” are used interchangeably. Such agency oversight helps to assure that the applicable pressure vessels meet these safety and performance standards. However, there are currently no comparable regulatory standards for controlling the type of apparatus that may be subsequently attached or assembled to the pressure vessel, to fill the vessel and/or to control the flow and safe venting of its pressurized contents. Pin valves commonly used for this purpose can be fairly easily removed or tampered with. Also, such valves can be replaced by substitute valves which may not contain a burst disk or other features designed for the safe and reliable use of the pressure vessel. Also, replacement valves may be improperly installed or otherwise defective.
Such pressure vessels are commonly used with paintball markers, to supply controlled bursts of pressurized gas to propel the paintballs out of the marker barrel. The pressure bottles, which are refillable, vary in gas capacity depending on the number of shots the paintball player will take before having to again refill. Typical CO2 bottle sizes range from 9 ozs to 24 ozs and are rated at 1800 psi, although they typically operate at about 850 psi. These CO2 bottles represent the majority of paintball bottles currently in use.
In this context, it is typical for a standard pin valve to reside within a valve body, the valve body having a first end that threadably connects to the pressure bottle and a second end that threadably connects to the paintball marker. But this typical design presents safety problems, as described in an article published by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and entitled “CPSC issues New Safety Warning for Paintball Guns,” which is expressly incorporated by reference herein, in its entirety.
More specifically, the use of two separate threadable connections at opposite ends of the same valve body creates an unacceptable risk of an accidental disconnection. Due to the pressure of the gas in the bottle, any sudden, accidental disconnection could result in a deadly projectile. With this type of structure, the repeated connection and disconnection of the marker to the valve body, via the threaded connection, can produce the unintended application of torque to the other threaded connection between the valve body and the pressure bottle. Moreover, this can occur on a repeated basis.
More specifically, the use of a pin valve housed within a valve body that directly threads into both the pressure bottle and the appliance (paintball gun or other gas powered device) can result in inadvertent removal of the pin valve from the pressurized bottle. This can occur in cases where the resistance to removal of the valve from the threaded appliance is greater than the resistance required to remove the pin valve from the pressure vessel. And this may occur for a number of different reasons, including the inadvertent cross threading of the valve to the appliance, or even the use of non-conforming threads in the appliance receiver, or incorrect installation of the pin valve to the pressure vessel, or the use of a non-conforming pin valve thread. Invariably, all of these situations eventually occur during periodic refilling of the pressure vessel.
In addition to this safety problem, this type of valve body is also relatively bulky and expensive, due to the need to provide two axially spaced threaded connections, to connect to two different structures. For paintball markers, this unnecessarily adds to the weight and bulk of the overall device.
It is an object of the present invention to improve the safety of pressure bottles used in conjunction with paintball markers, and to facilitate refilling of such pressure bottles in a manner which does not create a corresponding increase in safety risk.
It is another object of the present invention to simplify the connections between a pressure bottle and a paintball marker.
It is another object of the present invention to eliminate the susceptibility to sudden and inadvertent valve body removal from a pressure bottle, which may otherwise result from undesired torquing or loosening of the connection therebetween, when a user tries to disconnect the pressure bottle from the paintball marker.
It is still another object of the present invention to reduce the overall costs of the components that connect to a paintball marker.
It is still another object of the present invention to achieve these other objectives while still employing a structure which readily accommodates i.e., easily connects to and disconnects from, a standard paintball marker.